U.S. Representative Gabrielle Gifford of Arizona was shot in the head outside a grocery store in Tucson while holding a public event, U.S. National Public Radio reported Saturday.
At least three of her staff members were also shot by an unidentified gunman who ran up and began shooting indiscriminately, according to media reports. The FBI is involved in the investigation. A suspect is in custody.

Gabrielle Gifford was shot in the head POINT BLANK. News reports says she along with 6 others are dead. Accounts are conflicting, saying she is in *grave condition and is in surgery.*

Just so we don’t get amnesia, last March Sarah Palin made a list of 20 Democrats who were pro HCR bill in her “Reload & Retreat crosshairs.

Then she created a map of the U.S. with the targeted Democrats pinpointed . . . by using rifle sight cross hairs.

Ten Democrats have been threatened in one way or another. Here’s a partial list, from Daily Kos.

So now is this a “cutesy game that Palin and her ilk have been playing? 3 CHICS thinks not. The unread and ignorant who follow the Palins and Becks take them DEAD serious. Now let’s see what the media has to report about this.

Please send up prayers for Ms. Gifford, her family, and all the families of the victims.

Upate U.S. District Arizona Judge John roll has died. President Obama has confirmed in his announcement.

In February, when U.S. District Judge John Roll presided over a $32 million civil-rights lawsuit filed by illegal immigrants against an Arizona rancher, the Marshals Service was anticipating the fallout.

When Roll ruled the case could go forward, [U.S. Marshal David Gonzales] said talk-radio shows cranked up the controversy and spurred audiences into making threats.

In one afternoon, Roll logged more than 200 phone calls. Callers threatened the judge and his family. They posted personal information about Roll online.

“They said, ‘We should kill him. He should be dead,’ ” Gonzales said.

Roll, who is the chief federal judge in Arizona, said both he and his wife were given a protection detail for about a month. Source

Two former Democratic representatives from Arizona reportedly received numerous threats during their time in office after being placed on Sarah Palin’s “crosshairs” map.

“I cannot tell you how much I wish a panty bomber would come in and just fucking blow your place up,” one constituent told former Arizona Congressman Harry Mitchell, a Democrat who lost his reelection bid last year.

Another former Arizona representative, Ann Kirkpatrick, received emails calling her a “whore” and had a sewer cap thrown through her office window, The Daily Best reported.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), who was shot in the head Saturday in Tucson, was among 20 other members of Congress who were on a “target list” published by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Six people were killed and at least 14 others were injured in the attack.

A map of the US, published on Palin’s Facebook page, featured targeting crosshairs over individual congressional districts Palin had urged supporters to focus on. While her note called for “pink slips,” she added that supporters should fire a “salvo” at those lawmakers.

Been watching both MSNBC & CNN today. The pundits have been given their script.

“Sarah Palin is not responsible for the Arizona shootings.” Ed Shultz just said it verbatim. and now interviewing the guy Joe who apprehneded Loughner, referring to Loughner as a “LONE WOLF.” Now who the hell told Joe this guy was a “LONE WOLF?”

The shooting rampage in Tucson, Arizona, that killed six people and left U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords in critical condition is contributing at least momentarily to a cooling of U.S. political rhetoric.

The incident on Jan. 8, coming after the Jan. 5 opening of a new Congress in which Republicans took control of the U.S. House, led the House to postpone legislative business for the coming week as both parties rushed to condemn the attack.

It is also likely to hurt the image of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, said Ross Baker, a congressional scholar at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

The former Republican vice presidential candidate has posted on the Internet a map of the U.S. with the cross-hair symbols for a rifle scope dotting the home states of lawmakers, including Giffords, whom she was targeting for defeat in the 2010 congressional election.

The tragedy “will take some of the edge off of the polarization” and “will be used by lots of people as an exhortation for people to be kinder to each other,” said Baker. At the same time, Palin’s brand of “female macho,” he said, “is not going to wear very well after this.”

“Tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. eastern standard time, I call on Americans to observe a moment of silence to honor the innocent victims of the senseless tragedy in Tucson, Arizona, including those still fighting for their lives. It will be a time for us to come together as a nation in prayer or reflection, keeping the victims and their families closely at heart.”

The President will observe the moment of silence with White House staff on the South Lawn. The moment of silence will be pooled press.

Today, the President has signed a proclamation calling for flags to be flown at half-staff.

Also, the planned trip by the President to Schenectady, New York, on Tuesday, January 11, to the General Electric energy division is postponed. The trip is expected to be rescheduled.

Washington (CNN) – Rep. Robert Brady, D-Pennsylvania, said he will introduce legislation making it a federal crime for a person to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a Member of Congress or federal official.

Brady’s decision to offer the legislation comes less than 24 hours after a gunman attempted to assassinate Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Arizona, in a shooting that claimed the lives of a federal judge, and a nine year-old girl, among others.

“The president is a federal official,” Brady said in a telephone interview with CNN. “You can’t do it to him; you should not be able to do it to a congressman, senator or federal judge.

“This is not a wake up call, this is major alarms going off,” he said.

Brady is particularly incensed over a web posting by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin during the 2010 election in which she targeted 20 House Democrats, including Giffords for political defeat. The posting showed a map of the United States with the 20 Democratic congressional districts identified by gun sights.

“You can’t put bulls eyes or crosshairs on a United States congressman or a federal official,” Brady said. “I understand this web site that had it on there is no longer in existence. Someone is feeling a little guilty.”……………..

They’re getting ready to shut this mofo down!!!!! It’s over for the bitch.

In the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, make no mistake: we have a mere taste of the deep river of know-nothing sewage that flows just under the American surface that is about to gush into view with the Far Right having having made their takeover of one house of our Congress a reality. This is the “Second Amendment remedy” they’ve been rooting for. The shooter may be nuts. Who pushed him? Who created the climate where these actions were thinkable?

In the 1970s and 80s I was a Far Right instigator, a leader of the (then new) anti-abortion movement. I describe why I left this movement in my book Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back. My late father Francis Schaeffer has been called the father of the Religious Right. I — following the Evangelical “holy tradition” of North Korea-style nepotism — was for a time his sidekick. Together we helped set the table for the feast of reactionary hate America is dining on today as the White Far Right/Neoconservative War Machine and the Religious non-reality-based anti-modern Permanent American Lynch Mob hits America in the mouth for daring to elect our first black president and other “liberals.”

Who is the Republican Far Right and what do they want? To understand our Republican future — check out our recent Republican past. These are the “patriots” who gave us:

Two non-stop wars that needlessly killed over 5,000 Americans

Replaced our military with a mercenary killers-for-hire dirty world of “contractors” that now outnumber our men and women in every American military operation

Destroyed our economy by deregulating business and the banks

Launched an anti-gay “gays-choose-to-be-gay” mythology on America leading to the further oppression of gay men and women

Put secretive Far Right religious operatives including the “C-Street” (“Family”) in positions of influence through members of congress who are in their pockets

Aided and abetted the death to gays legislation in Uganda

Tried to launch a race and religion war in America by stirring up hate against the Muslim minority

Have tried to turn non-Latino Americans into a Latino-fearing xenophobic anti-immigrant mob
Created the climate wherein abortion providers were first labeled “baby killers” then murdered

Lied about the President, saying he isn’t American, is a Muslim, is the Antichrist

Unleashed a plague of guns on America feeding one murder spree after another

Struck down over a century of legal rulings limiting the buying and selling of elections by corporations, giving us a “new” and “improved” system of unlimited secret contributions to eviscerate even the pretense of actual democracy and finally hand America over to the super wealthy — maybe forever

Run candidates for Congress who are calling for the violent overthrow of the American Government should they fail at the ballot box

Supported anti-science, anti-education biblical mythology

Backed candidates who want to force rape victims to carry their pregnancies to term

Fought people fighting global warming and plunged us into an irrevocable date with global death while reaping short term profits for the coal and oil industry

Put the American future in hock to Far Right Zionists forever by backing the settlers in the State of Isreal and by trying to undermine peace iniatives

Put America in hock to Far Right Evangelicals who are rooting for the “return of Christ” and the Apocalypse…

And with the Tea Party Republicans in Congress now you haven’t seen anything yet.

To change the way things are we need to understand why at any given moment about a third of our population doesn’t care about what is true — or even fact-based — but instead live life informed by self-reinforcing beliefs which are proudly non-fact-based and rooted in deep-seated resentment that can’t be cured because what is resented never actually happened.

Stop the flood of putrid moral failure that is about to engulf us. Get into the “minds” of the killers, into the heads sort of people who saw Sarah Palin’s cross hairs targeting an American congresswoman and decided to pull an actual trigger. “Listen to the killer’s “thoughts” of the sort of person who gunned down cops in Pittsburgh because he said that since Obama was elected “the government” would take away his guns…

I hope Obama fails… watch Fox News, put a Psalm 109 bumper sticker on my car calling for the death of the President, carry a loaded weapon to a political rally to show them we will keep our Second Amendment options open, put enemies in the crosshairs of a rifle scope on Facebook, Obama isn’t a real American, he’s Muslim, He’s a communist, like Hitler, like Stalin, Death Panels, watch Fox News, government takeover of health care, watch Fox News, return to the gold standard, watch Fox News, buy gold, the Fed is evil, the United Nations is evil, Jesus will come back soon, the gays chose to be that way, the gays want to take over America, watch Fox News, we’re here to take back our country, Obama is a white racist, there will be Second Amendment remedies, government is the problem, there is no global warming, watch Fox News, if Obama is elected he’ll take our guns, watch Fox News, Jesus is coming back, watch Fox News, Obama hates America, watch Fox News, Obama doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism, buy guns, watch Fox News, buy more guns, Jesus is coming back, one world government is on the way, stand with Israel, Jesus is coming back, global warming is a conspiracy to take our freedoms away, stop those Mexican immigrants now, send them back, watch Fox News, say no to citizenship for immigrant’s children, even ones born here, buy guns, buy gold, kill a judge, kill a liberal, kill a congresswoman…

And the Far Right/Fox News reaction?

Ooops! This has nothing to do with us!

Take down the Facebook page that put the victim in the rifle cross hairs!

Ariz. — Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was in critical condition Sunday as investigators filed five charges against the man suspected in the shooting rampage that killed six and injured 14.

Jared Loughner is charged with one count of attempted assassination of member of Congress, two counts of killing an employee of the federal government and two counts of attempting to killing a federal employee.

Heather Williams, the first assistant federal public defender in Arizona, says the 22-year-old suspect doesn’t yet have a lawyer, but that her office is working to get a lawyer appointed for Loughner.

FBI Director Robert Mueller, who was sent by Attorney General Eric Holder to Arizona to help coordinate the investigation, said the shooter’s motive was still unknown. Investigators say they seized evidence suggesting Loughner planned ahead.

Investigators said they carried out a search warrant at the suspect’s home and seized an envelope from a safe with messages such as “I planned ahead,” “My assassination” and the name “Giffords” next to what appears to be the man’s signature.

Agents are “working around the clock to gather the facts to determine why someone would commit such heinous acts,” Mueller said.

Pima County Sheriff’s Deputy Jason Ogan said the man described earlier as a ‘person of interest’ was a cab driver who drove the gunman to the grocery store outside of which the shooting occurred.

Federal prosecutors have charged the suspect in the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) with attempted assassination and four other charges.

Jared Lee Loughner is charged with one count of attempted assassination of a member of Congress, two counts of killing an employee of the federal government and two counts of attempting to killing a federal employee.

WASHINGTON — Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), a lawmaker who faced several threats during the heated health care debate, is calling on the country to ratchet down its heated political rhetoric and calling on lawmakers to speak out forcefully and condemn such comments.

Noting that the tragic shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) — which left 13 people wounded and six dead — occurred just a week before Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, Clyburn said on “Fox News Sunday” that “good people” have a responsibility to not be silent:

I think the sheriff out there in Tucson — I think he’s got it right. Words do have consequences, and I think that — this is nothing new, I’ve been saying this for a long time now. We’re getting ready to celebrate, this weekend, the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., who admonished us that we are going to regret in this generation not just the vitriolic words and deeds of bad people, but the appalling silence of good people.

And I think that what has happened here is the vitriol has gotten so elevated, until people feel emboldened by this. And people, who are a little less than stable, and people aren’t thinking for themselves or are so easily influenced, they got out and do things that all of us pay a great price for. I applaud the Republican leadership for doing what they’ve done in this instance, for giving everybody a chance to step back and take a hard look at this, and decide how we can go forward.

The Pima County sheriff is telling it like it is about the violent rhetoric day after day in this country. He’s pulling no fking punches either. Now, the media wants to listen. Phuck them. They’re just as fking complicit. They could have reported the truth about how violent rhetoric can have devastating consequences but nooooo…they continued the meme about folks are mad at the black man sitting in the oval office & helped escalate this bish instead of denouncing it front jump street. ….And now a white woman has gotten a bullet in the head and innocent people are dead because of it!

Those bitches in the MSM want to say it’s not political. Funny if it had been a Muslim, it would have been automatically considered politcal. The media continues to spin and attempt to scrub themselves of any responsibility for the violence that they helped to incite.

Senator Dick Durbin appeared on CNN’s State of the Union and told Candy Crowley that Sarah Palin’s gun imagery of targeting certain congressional districts was “beyond the bounds” and “not acceptable rhetoric.” Although when pressed by Crowley, Durbin did not want to suggest there was a direct connection between the rhetoric and yesterday’s shooting of Congresswoman Giffords, nor whether there was similarly unacceptable rhetoric amongst Democrats.

Durbin explained:

“We live in a world of violent images and violent words, but those of us in public life and the journalists who cover us, should be thoughtful in response to this and try to bring down the rhetoric, which I’m afraid has become pervasive in our discussion of political issues. The phrase ‘don’t retreat, reload’ – putting crosshairs on congressional districts as targets – these sorts of things I think invite the kind of toxic rhetoric that can lead unstable people to believe this is an acceptable response.”

I see and hear you Candy Crowley. These folks who got shot and killed yesterday were HUMANS, not rethugs or dems. But you media minions want to skate around the FACT that you propped this whore up while she sprayed her hate-filled rhetoric around our country. GTFOH Candy Carbo- Crowley!

Here is what Sarah Palin said on the Facebook page where she depicted Gabrielle Giffords in the cross hairs of a rifle scope: “Don’t retreat! Instead – RELOAD!”

Well, the guy who shot Giffords yesterday managed to keep firing until he killed six, including a child, and wounded 13 .

Palin would no doubt say that she was only speaking in metaphor, that she only meant her followers should work to unseat Giffords and 19 other Democrats who had roused her ire by voting for health care.

But anyone with any sense at all knows that violent language can incite actual violence, that metaphor can incite murder. At the very least, Palin added to a climate of violence.

Palin should have taken it as a warning of what might happen when a Tea Party hothead dropped a gun while heckling Giffords at an earlier Congress On Your Corner event, more than a year ago.

That did not stop Palin from declaring Giffords a “target.” Giffords’ district office was subsequently vandalized, and the congresswoman noted that Palin had put “the cross hairs of a gun sight over our district.”

“When people do that, they have to realize that there are consequences to that action,” Giffords said.

Gifford’s deputy director Ron Barber also was injured in the shooting but was OK, said C.J. Karamargin, Giffords’ communications director. He was not at the event.

Another staffer, Pam Simon, was also hit, Karamargin said, but she will also be alright.

Roll started his legal career as a bailiff in the Pima County Superior Court. He served an assistant city attorney in Tucson and worked as a criminal prosecutor in Pima County before joining the U.S. Attorney’s office in 1980, where he specialized in prosecuting drug cases.

He was appointed to the Arizona Appeals Court in 1987 and served until he was named to the federal bench by President George H. W. Bush in 1991.

He began serving as presiding judge in 2006.

A native of Pennsylvania, he graduated from the University of Arizona in 1969 and received his law degree from the University of Virginia in 1972.

Savage America has reared its head again, with another shooting rampage, this time targeting a U.S. representative and leaving at least six individuals dead and a dozen wounded.

This attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 other human beings by a 22-year-old with a Glock 19 9mm semi-automatic pistol was called “a tragedy for Arizona and a tragedy for our entire country” by President Obama.

His sentiments were echoed across the political spectrum, making the terrible tragedy one of few things the two parties have easily agreed upon in recent memory.

Perhaps this incident will bring about some “soul searching,” as Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik suggested in his remarks before the press.

Sheriff Clarence Dupnik pointed to “vitriolic rhetoric that we see and what we see on TV and how our youngsters are being raised” contributing to a United States of America that is no longer “nice.”

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords remained heavily sedated and in critical condition Sunday as investigators sought to understand what motivated a gunman to carry out an assassination attempt on the Democratic lawmaker in a rampage that killed six people.

University Medical Center spokeswoman Darci Slaten told The Associated Press that Giffords underwent a two-hour surgery Saturday and has not been conscious since the shooting. She said more information will be released at a news conference in which one of the doctors who operated on Giffords plans to speak.

She tried to claim “We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights. It was simply cross-hairs like you’d see on maps.” When was the last time you saw cross hairs on a map?

Right now, it is hard for the Right to distance themselves from the rhetoric of the past even as they plan to. As Palin scrubs her site of all references to cross hairs and reloading, that information is spreading like wildfire. While this was not the intended result, it was the end result no matter what. Eventually, someone who is deranged or unhinged believes the rhetoric and picks up a gun.

An aide to Sarah Palin claims the crosshairs depicted in her now-infamous target list of Democrats were not actually gun-sights, and that it’s “obscene” and “appalling” to blame Palin for the shooting.

“We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights. It was simply cross-hairs like you’d see on maps,” said Rebecca Mansour on the Tammy Bruce radio show. Moreover, there was “nothing irresponsible” about the image, and to draw a line connecting Palin and Saturday’s shooting is “obscene” and “appalling.”

Why did Palin scrub the map from her facebook page if the bish isn’t guilty? No Sarah, you will OWN this mofo! Indict Palin for inciting violence!

Gabrielle Giffords shooting in Tucson: Did it stem from state of political discourse?
By Sandhya Somashekhar
Sunday, January 9, 2011; 12:38 AM

No information had yet been released about the man implicated in the mass shooting that wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) before pundits and activists across the political spectrum identified the culprit: The sad state of political discourse in America.

Liberals were quick to blame the tea party movement and the sometimes-militant rhetoric employed by its standard-bearers. On Twitter, activists repeatedly referred to the remarks of Sharron Angle (R), the unsuccessful Senate candidate in Nevada, who last year advocated “second-amendment remedies” to some of the nation’s problems. And they noted the map posted by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (R), who depicted crosshairs over the states where she hoped to oust Democratic incumbents.

As details emerged about the alleged gunman and his erratic views, however, the tea party responded.

“If we ever needed an official political obituary to political civility in this country, we’ve seen it,” said Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation. “The facts weren’t even out there, Rep. Giffords had been carted away in a stretcher, we didn’t even know her condition, but the war had already started. The folks on the hard left were already out there blaming the tea party.”

Turns out the politics espoused by the alleged gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, 22, are difficult to pin down. A Jared Loughner lists on his YouTube channel Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto among his favorite books, but his views are difficult to decipher from his videos – and it is not clear if he is the same man implicated in the shooting.

That Giffords was targeted by a tea partier was an easy assumption to make considering her historical clashes with the movement. A moderate Democrat, she had been vilified by some conservatives for her opposition to her state’s aggressive crackdown on illegal immigrants and for her support for the health-care overhaul.

When asked by The New York Post on Saturday if his daughter had any enemies, Giffords’s father, Spencer Giffords responded, “Yeah…The whole tea party.”

We, the undersigned, call on the Department of Justice to issue an indictment against former Alaska governor Sarah Palin for incitement to violence for designating Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords with a gun target image at her SarahPAC website at http://www.sarahpac.com. We believe there is ample evidence from Palin’s public speeches and commentary that the image was used with the specific intent of inciting violence against Democratic congressmen labeled with these gun targets. We are also concerned that failure to prosecute Palin and others who have promoted this type of gratuitous violence sets a dangerous precedent.

Late Saturday night, Fox News Channel’s Geraldo Rivera, discussing the Arizona Safeway shooting that left Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford injured and six others dead with Tea Party 365 co-founder David Webb, “went there” by invoking former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Palin’s name has been linked to reports on Saturday’s shooting thanks, in part, to the “crosshair” imagery used in her so-called “Hit List” of 20 politicians, previously posted on website “Take Back the 20.”

“However unfair the link is,” said Rivera, “I think that this event affects Sarah Palin’s at least short term political future.” He then offered his prediction that, tomorrow, Palin’s name will (still) be tied to the media’s flurry of reports on the shooting, facing “criticism and scrutiny” for a perceived link to alleged gunman Jared Loughner.

The Pima County sheriff’s department says that a second person may have been involved in today’s shooting. “We’re not convinced that [Loughner] acted alone. There is some reason to believe he came to this location with another individual.”

Gabrielle Giffords, the congresswoman shot Saturday in a shocking attack outside an Arizona supermarket, was one of the Democrats who MSNBC’s Keith Olberman was suspended for making contributions to.

Olbermann donated $2,400 — the maximum amount allowable under law — to failed Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway and Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Giffords. His donations to Grijalva and Giffords were made on the same day that Grijalva appeared as a guest on “Countdown.”

What are you going to say tomorrow, John, that you could have said on the house floor about attacks on your fellow congressmen during the passing of the healthcare care bill? You had a chance to address the hateful attacks on Congressman Lewis & Clever but you chose not to. You coddled the racist haters!

Sarah Palin’s call to arms, “Don’t Retreat, Reload” finally results in a tragic shooting of an Arizona Congresswoman. Three term Representative Gabrielle Giffords, representing Arizona’s 8th district and caught in Palin’s cross-hairs, was gunned down today and shot in the head. One of her aides was killed and at least 12 others injured.

SarahPAC took the cross-hairs list down today. The mid-terms were over on November 2. Why would the Palin camp remove this ugly fund-raising ad from their website TODAY? Is this a tacit admission of her culpability in the violence she has been advocating since coming into the national spotlight on August 29, 2008?

The FBI needs to investigate this to the fullest. And that will mean this scumbag will have to stay alive, so that they can question him. Did he act alone, what were his motives for shooting a well-loved congresswoman in the head at point blank?

and frankly, I don’t TRUST the media to give me the facts. They can’t even get the spelling of the shooters name right, the age of a 9 year old dead girl right, whether Gabrielle Giffords was dead or alive after she got shot.

Just a completer and utter travesty, our media has become. Incompetent, bought and paid for.

Sarah Palin January 8th, 2011 by Shannyn Moore
Palin’s “Reload” Hits “Target”: Updated
Sarah Palin’s call to arms, “Don’t Retreat, Reload” finally results in a tragic shooting of an Arizona Congresswoman. Three term Representative Gabrielle Giffords, representing Arizona’s 8th district and caught in Palin’s cross-hairs, was gunned down today and shot in the head. One of her aides was killed and at least 12 others injured. In March, […]

Arizona Senator John McCain defended Sarah Palin on NBC’s Today Show last March:

McCain was asked about what host Ann Curry described as Palin’s “incendiary language.”

“Ann, I have seen the rhetoric of targeted districts as long as I’ve been in politics,” he replied. “Please. This is — any threat of violence is terrible, but to say that there is a targeted district or that we ‘reload’ or go back in to the fight again, please…Those are fine. They’re used all the time.”

“Those words have been used throughout of my political career,” McCain added. “There are targeted districts, and there are areas that we call battleground states, and so please, that rhetoric and kind of language is just part of the political lexicon. There is no place for threats of violence or anything else, but to say that someone is in a battleground state is not originated today.”

After a testy back-and-forth, Curry said, “I think it is the ‘reload’ and ‘crosshairs’ that’s caused a lot of people to be concerned, senator.”

John McCain is responsible for unleashing this bitch on America. He needs to be taken to the woodshed for putting our country at risk. No good mofo didn’t think about the country, all he was concerned about was votes he thought he could get from Hillary voters! Damn you, John McCain!

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden issued the following statement
Saturday about the shooting in Tucson, Ariz., of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle
Giffords and several others:

“We at NASA are deeply shocked and saddened by the senseless shooting
of Representative Giffords and others at Saturdayâ€™s public event in
Tucson. As a long-time supporter of NASA, Representative Giffords not
only has made lasting contributions to our country, but is a strong
advocate for the nationâ€™s space program and a member of the NASA
family. She also is a personal friend with whom I have had the great
honor of working. We at NASA mourn this tragedy and our thoughts and
prayers go out to Congresswoman Giffords, her husband Mark Kelly,
their family, and the families and friends of all who perished or
were injured in this terrible tragedy.”

And this video is for all the folks who have AMNESIA. President has been calling for CIVILITY in our political debates.May 02, 2010 10:00 AM
President Obama Calls For Civility in Our Political Debates
By Heather

President Obama gave the commencement speech at The University of Michigan and talked about the tone of our political discourse and the need for civility. He noted that too much overheated rhetoric can push people away from politics and stressed the need for a “thriving news business that is separate from opinion makers and talking heads”.

Couldn’t agree with him more on that. I could have done without the plug for the celebrity gossip ridden HuffPo and comparing the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times as though the New York Times is a liberal institution. They helped George Bush sell the invasion of Iraq for Pete’s sake. Other than those gripes it was a pretty good speech. I’m sure Beck and Limbaugh and company won’t like it.

Here’s the final portion.

These arguments we’re having over government and health care and war and taxes are serious arguments. They should arouse people’s passions, and it’s important for everyone to join in the debate, with all the rigor that a free people require.

But we cannot expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down. You can disagree with a certain policy without demonizing the person who espouses it. You can question someone’s views and their judgment without questioning their motives or their patriotism. Throwing around phrases like “socialist” and “Soviet-style takeover;” “fascist” and “right-wing nut” may grab headlines, but it also has the effect of comparing our government, or our political opponents, to authoritarian, and even murderous regimes.

Again, we have seen this kind of politics in the past. It’s been practiced by both fringes of the ideological spectrum, by the left and the right, since our nation’s birth.

The problem with it is not the hurt feelings or the bruised egos of the public officials who are criticized.

The problem is that this kind of vilification and over-the-top rhetoric closes the door to the possibility of compromise. It undermines democratic deliberation. It prevents learning – since after all, why should we listen to a “fascist” or “socialist” or “right wing nut?” It makes it nearly impossible for people who have legitimate but bridgeable differences to sit down at the same table and hash things out. It robs us of a rational and serious debate that we need to have about the very real and very big challenges facing this nation. It coarsens our culture, and at its worst, it can send signals to the most extreme elements of our society that perhaps violence is a justifiable response.

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who represents a district adjacent to Gabrielle Giffords’s, said that Saturday’s shooting is a consequence of the vitriolic rhetoric that has arisen over the past few years among extreme elements of the Tea Party.

“The climate has gotten so toxic in our political discourse, setting up for this kind of reaction for too long. It’s unfortunate to say that. I hate to say that,” Grijalva said in an interview with The Huffington Post. “If you’re an opponent, you’re a deadly enemy,” Grijalva said of the mindset among Arizona extremists. “Anybody who contributed to feeding this monster had better step back and realize they’re threatening our form of government.”

Grijalva said that Tea Party leader Sarah Palin should reflect on the rhetoric that she has employed. “She — as I mentioned, people contributing to this toxic climate — Ms. Palin needs to look at her own behavior, and if she wants to help the public discourse, the best thing she could do is to keep quiet.”

Grijalva said that his family has been provided with protection and that he expects further precautions will be taken by Capitol Police when he returns to Capitol Hill.

According to law enforcement sources, Jared Loughner, the alleged Arizona gunman who shot Rep. Giffords and killed five others, including Federal judge John M. Roll, used a Glock 19, a semi-automatic pistol that was legally purchased on Nov. 30 at Sportman’s Warehouse in Tucson.

Back in March 2010, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) responded to the use of violent imagery and heated political rhetoric from conservative activists — mentioning Sarah Palin’s use of crosshairs on a map over Democratic-held districts such as hers. At the time, Giffords said that people should realize such rhetoric has consequences.

Giffords was shot today at a meet-and-greet with constituents in Tucson.

In March, Giffords appeared on MSNBC to talk about the then-recent vandalism of her office, which followed her vote for health care reform. During the interview, she said that political leaders had a responsibly to say they would not stand for violence.

And what did Giffords get for her pronouncements? A bullet in the head, and ***CRICKETS*** from her colleagues. Now they wanna come out and make all these flowery statements. Sorry, I think it’s a bit late.

WASHINGTON — The shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is a watershed event in many ways, some of which we cannot yet know, but one of the clearest and simplest is this: Congress and its members are about to be permanently quarantined, physically isolated, from the people it and they represent.

Thirty years ago, there was no such thing as security on Capitol Hill or for members. Members of the public were free to roam the halls, and police presence was practically invisible. There were no barricades around the grounds, and even the leadership rarely had any form of protection.

The Hill was the very model of the People’s Place — and in that respect it was an inspirational symbol of our democracy.

Congress began to close in on itself in 1983. A bomb explosion outside the Senate chamber engendered the installation of magnatometers; in 1998 a gunman shot two Capitol Police in an attack in the House. The result was a system of careful monitoring of all visitors and the extension of police protection to all members of the leadership. The 9/11 attacks led to the erection of barricades and new defense perimeters around the grounds; new inspection procedures were initiated after an anthrax attack in 2003 on the offices of then-Democratic leader Tom Dachle’s office.

The construction of a new Visitor Center now means that the public can only enter through a secure facility and can only walk the halls in tour groups.

New even more restrictive rules are now inevitable. It’s even possible that the general public will be banned from the hallways of the Capitol Complex, at least at certain times and under certain circumstances.

THIS WAS A POLITICAL ATTACK. I don’t give a good rats ass who the shooter is, the rhetoric and motives surrounding the violent shootings are associated with RIGHT WING, TEA PARTY/TEABAGGING/GOP agendas.

“It is with the deepest sadness that we have received word of the attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, members of her staff, and her constituents. This terrible act of violence is a national tragedy, and today is a very sad day for our country.

“My prayers, and the prayers of all Members of Congress, go out to her husband, Captain Mark Kelly, their family, and to all of the staff and others who were victims of this horrible attack.

The alleged Arizona shooter who killed six people and wounded another 12 including US Representative Gabrielle Giffords has been identified as 22 year old Jared Lee Loughner.

The shooting took place as Congresswoman Giffords held a constituent meeting at a Safeway grocery store in Tucson on Saturday.

What’s believed to be a posting on You Tube by Loughner begins with the words “My final thoughts: Jared Lee Loughner.” The posting contains confused rantings.

The posting suggests he did not expect to survive the shooting, and says he “defines terrorism.”

“If I define terrorist then a terrorist is a person who employs terror or terrorism, especially as a political weapon. I define terrorism,” he wrote on the video.

He said he was a United States military recruit at MEPS in Phoenix, with references to receiving one mini bible before the recruit tests.

“I didn’t write a belief on my army application, and the recruiter wrote on the application: none,” he wrote.

He said the government was “implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar.”

Rep. Giffords is reported to have survived the attack after being shot in the head and had undergone surgery at a local hospital.

Arizona state senator Linda Lopez told Fox, “We just heard that she is responding to commands. She made it through surgery.”

The chief of the Pima County police department, Rich Castigar, said that 18 people had been shot in the incident and that six people are dead.

He said a 22 year old man is in custody, who has had limited interaction with law enforcement and has only one minor run-in with the law in its jurisdiction. News outlets named the man as Jared Lee Loughner.

Police were serving multiple search warrants in relation to the shooting and the individual they have in custody. A rumour suggested there might be someone else with a weapon at the scene but four hours later Rich Castigar said they dont have any information that suggests there was another shooter.

He said the weapon used was a pistol with an extended magazine, and that it was a “dynamic event that is still evolving.”

NBC News reported Federal Judge John M. Roll was killed in the attack and there are reports a congressional staffer may have been killed, but details on the dead and injured are still sketchy.

STATEMENT BY SENATOR McCAIN REGARDING THE TRAGEDY IN ARIZONA
January 8, 2011
Washington, D.C. ­– U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) made the following statement regarding the horrifying attack at an event for U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) in Tucson, Arizona:

“I am horrified by the violent attack on Representative Gabrielle Giffords and many other innocent people by a wicked person who has no sense of justice or compassion. I pray for Gabby and the other victims, and for the repose of the souls of the dead and comfort for their families. I beg our loving Creator to spare the lives of those who are still alive, heal them in body and spirit, and return them to their loved ones.

“Whoever did this; whatever their reason, they are a disgrace to Arizona, this country and the human race, and they deserve and will receive the contempt of all decent people and the strongest punishment of the law.”

OFFICIAL STATEMENT FROM PRESIDENT OBAMA ON THE SHOOTING AT CONGRESSWOMAN GABRIELLE GIFFORD’S EVENT IN TUCSON, ARIZONA:

“This morning, in an unspeakable tragedy, a number of Americans were shot in Tuscon, Arizona, at a constituent meeting with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. And while we are continuing to receive information, we know that some have passed away, and that Representative Giffords is gravely wounded.

We do not yet have all the answers. What we do know is that such a senseless and terrible act of violence has no place in a free society. I ask all Americans to join me and Michelle in keeping Representative Giffords, the victims of this tragedy, and their families in our prayers.”

Gifford was #4 on Palin’s list of “RELOAD” CROSSHAIRS” REMEMBER?! March 2010
From HuffPo.

“In the wake of numerous death threats and vandalism plaguing House Democrats who voted for health insurance reform, many have been asking if the actions of Sarah Palin and other right-wing pundits cross the line from free speech into criminal speech.

Sarah Palin published on her Facebook page a list of twenty Democrats who voted for health insurance reform and who are elected in districts that used to be Republican. Their locations on a map of the United States are marked by crosshairs – a symbol that clearly refers to target practice and violence.

These targeted politicians have received death threats. Their offices and homes and the homes of their family members have been vandalized. They are beefing up security measures for themselves and those who are close to them. Sarah Palin might be to blame.

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Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.